Content Marketing
Finding it difficult to dedicate time & other resources to creating great content? Check out this pro’s guide that can help small to medium businesses (SMBs) create & roll out brilliant content marketing campaigns.
5 Efficient Content Marketing Ideas for SMBs via @TylerTafelsky • @MKTGInsiders
SEO takes time, patience and the right processes. Check out this step-by-step process to optimizing blogs. It that can help you increase search traffic to your blog over time.
SEO for Bloggers: How to Nail the Optimization Process for Your Posts – Whiteboard Friday via @randfish • @moz
Subscription memberships can be a great way to generate steady income. Here’s an insider’s take on how to dive into – and reap the most benefits from – this lucrative business model.
Advanced Subscription Membership Techniques With Stu McLaren via @SFBcom
Trial and error can be a powerful learning tool when it comes to content marketing. Here are some important lessons one content marketing pro has learned after nearly a decade of testing out different content marketing tactics and strategies.
What We’ve Learned From 8 Years Of Content Marketing via Andrew Reese @ONTRAPORT
Color is a subtle beast that can attract or turn off an audience. Check out this revealing look at the psychological influence that color can have on the human brain. This can help you harness the power of color in your content (& digital) marketing campaigns!
Infographic: How Colors Affect Conversions via @seanvwork • @CrazyEgg
Social Media Marketing
Focusing on these lesser-known social media networks can provide up to 75% of your referral traffic. Here are the 6 social platforms that you can leverage for massive amounts of referral traffic.
How to Generate 75% More Social Media Traffic When You’re Not Popular via @neilpatel
Confused about how SEO & social media relate? Check out this insightful take on how SEO and social media marketing can work together to benefit each other.
Social Media and SEO: When and How They Work Together via @seonate • @marketo
There have been lots of predictions about how Instagram Stories will kill Snapchat. Influencer Jay Baer disagrees, however, and believes the opposite is true. Here’s why.
Why Instagram Stories is Actually Good News for Snapchat via @jaybaer • @convince
The headlines for your Facebook ads can influence whether users decide to respond to your call-to-action. Check out these tips for crafting compelling headlines. They can help you see better returns from your Facebook marketing.
How to Write Better Headlines for Your Facebook Ads via @soph_bern • @hubspot
Get a leg up on your competition in Facebook and other major social networks. Here’s the tool kit you need to become a social media superstar, regardless of the size of your business.
Social Media Marketing for Small Business: 70 Strategies, Ideas & Examples via @jordanlore6 • @wishpond
Top 5 Content Marketing Mistakes & How to Avoid Them
Content marketing can offer a powerful way to connect with an audience. It can also empower brands to build authority and turn more readers into new clients.
So how do you do it for your brand?
How do you create “interesting” content that people will want to read (and engage with)?
And how do you start developing content that will develop authority, a following and (ideally) more leads for your business?
This week, I’ll start answering these questions by pointing out some of the most common content marketing mistakes brands make. Knowing how to avoid these mistakes (or fix them) can help you position your content for more traffic, engagement and conversions.
Common Content Marketing Mistakes
-
1. Sloppily written content – Typos, poor grammar, sentence fragments and other mistakes can kill your content. Sloppy content can be a turnoff to an audience (because it’s a red flag that a source is NOT an authority on a topic). It can also free fall in search (because search engines don’t usually rank sloppy content well).
○ Fix: Make sure to edit your content at least once before publishing it. Ideally, perform this edit with a “fresh” set of eyes so any and all mistakes are caught and fixed before the content goes live.
-
2. Regurgitated content – This refers to content that just repeats information that’s already widely available online. If content offers no new insights, it’s simply not valuable to an audience.
○ Fix: Make sure that your content provides value, educates your audience and/or shares something new. If you’re finding that you can’t share anything new or insightful about a given topic, choose another topic that you can say something new about.
-
3. Poorly formatted content – Blocks of text on a page, no subheadings, no bullets, etc. can make a piece of content visually unappealing. In fact, without nice formatting that draws a reader in, content (even really interesting and well written content) is far more likely to get overlooked.
○ Fix: Keep your paragraphs short (like 2 to 3 sentences). Make sure there’s a new heading (or subheading) after every few paragraphs. Put lists in bullets. These formatting changes can make good content great!
-
4. Dated content – Content that focuses on out-of-date topics provides little to no value to an audience. And that means that the content will fall flat in search and see minimal (if any) engagement.
○ Fix: Do some research before you dive into writing. While it’s great to focus your content on current topics, evergreen topics can be even better (because they can give your content a longer shelf life).
-
5. Content that’s not optimized – Content that doesn’t target a relevant keyword (or keyword phrase) won’t see good rankings. And that can mean that no one finds or sees the piece.
○ Fix: In the research phase (before the writing starts), choose the best keyword phrase to target in a piece of content. Then, strategically use that phrase in the piece (and the associated meta data) to properly optimize it.
And don’t forget about the images! While images can be visually appealing and engaging, they can also provide SEO benefits. In other words, images can satisfy and appeal to both readers and search engines.
Common Content Marketing Mistakes: A Final Word
Every now and again, mistakes can trip up even the best laid plans. We are human after all.
So, try to keep a positive perspective about isolated mistakes. Consider them learning opportunities to refine your content and/or content marketing processes.
What have your experiences with content marketing been? Have you made – or successfully avoided – any mistakes?
Tell me about your content marketing experiences, challenges and successes on Facebook and LinkedIn. And don’t hesitate to get a hold of me on social media to ask any digital marketing question or just to say ‘hi.’ I look forward to hearing from you!